Rio 2016 Olympics boosted by success of Brazil’s World Cup

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro proved to be a magnificent host for the World Cup, despite plenty of doubts before the tournament. Photograph: Fifa via Getty Images

High on the eventual success of the World Cup, Rio 2016 organisers have boldly promised that their city’s next major sporting event in two years’ time will be “the Olympics of the Olympics”.

The reference by the mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, to the vow to stage the “Copa das Copas” in Brazil, was perhaps tongue in cheek but the sentiment is deadly serious. “The mistrust we had two months ago is not there. We’re convinced we’ll deliver everything on time. It’s going to be a great party,” he promised.

Yet while a successful World Cup has shifted sentiment about Rio’s lagging progress towards the Olympics in 2016, serious questions remain. Those concerns burst into the open two months ago when the International Olympic Committee vice-president, John Coates, warned Rio was further behind than the notoriously last-minute Athens Games of 2004.

That stoked fears among international federations that Rio’s ambitious pitch to hold the Games entirely within the confines of a city that looks spectacular but requires urgent infrastructure upgrades would be a bold legacy vision too far. As Paes admits, holding the equivalent of 28 simultaneous world championships and hosting 10,500 athletes, 45,000 volunteers and 21,500 accredited media is of a different order to seven World Cup matches.

But Mario Andrada, a former Nike executive who joined Rio 2016 last year as the communications director, said the German IOC president, Thomas Bach, had returned to Lausanne after a series of meetings with doubts assuaged.

“He’s taking home the World Cup and also the information that we are back on track,” he said. “The mood in the country has swung. The fears of collapse of transportation did not take place. The World Cup was a big success. Everyone who came to watch had a great month.”

“How ready are we? Ready enough in terms of venues. We began double shifts on the Olympic Park and we have started work on Deodoro,” says Andrada.

Organisers admit that construction remains 10 to 15% behind schedule but promise to be back on track by September. The Deodoro cluster of venues that will host seven sports including shooting, fencing and mountain biking has been the one causing most concern for the IOC.

Agberto Guimarães, Rio 2016’s executive director of sport and Paralympic integration, insisted that now construction was finally underway visible progress would be made. “We broke ground on 3 July. People are moving machines and doing foundation work. We have chosen excellent companies who can deliver,” he said. “So even though this is the last venue we have started we are moving according to the schedule presented to the federations.”

One of the stumbling blocks to date has been unlocking the promised funding amid wrangling between Brazil’s three layers of government. But Paes, who has staked his political future on a successful Games, has now underwritten key budget lines and the IOC has promised to forward income from broadcasting contracts.

Aside from Deodoro, there are major concerns over the behind schedule golf course and the sailing venue at Guarana Bay, which contains dangerously high levels of sewage. Andrada said a plan was in place to make it “cleaner and cleaner”. The reaction of the sport’s federation when they arrive for a test event, the first of 40-plus in Rio, in August will be key.

“We are very confident it will be perfect for the test event. We wouldn’t think about risking the health of the athletes if a sailor falls into the water. We have two meetings a week with State authorities to make the water cleaner.”

The city’s choked transport infrastructure, the overhaul of which Paes claims will be a major legacy benefit for the city, is a key problem for a host with ambitious plans to hold the Games in four zones scattered around the city. Construction of a key metro line that will link with high speed buses to ferry spectators to the Olympic Park at Barra is not scheduled to finish until May 2016. As during the World Cup, the atmosphere and vitality of the city itself is likely to help smooth any rough edges.

A modern Olympics remains a complex logistical puzzle and any repeat of the transport chaos of Atlanta in 1996 would quickly kill the party mood. Meanwhile, there remain wider questions about spending priorities and forced evictions. Paes claims the $36.7bn budget – 60% of which is raised from the commercial sector – is justified because it will turbocharge improvements in the city’s infrastructure. He said the bill for fixed sporting venues was $5.6bn, three-quarters of which would be raised from private investment.

The successful World Cup has already caused Rio 2016 organisers to revise their estimates upwards for the number of international visitors. They have also come up with a new plan to cater for the invasion of motor homes from other South American nations that became a feature of the World Cup.

Paes argued that the rationale behind the Games, to deliver an Olympics that would help transform the city, remained sound. “We won the Olympic bid because of our problems. That’s the point of the Olympics in Rio. The IOC will probably have an easier time in Tokyo,” he said. “Everything is already built. But what will the Olympics mean to the city of Rio versus the city of Tokyo?”

Andrada admits that the pressure will only get more intense from here but is confident Rio will ultimately deliver. “I learned from London and Sochi that two years to go is when you get out of the tunnel, out of the darkness,” he said.